# Are we now at the point where future archeologists/historians can't possibly misunderstand or not know what our current-day items, objects and events are? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 23, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235 "2025-07-23T18:51:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/61 "2025-07-25T03:11:53Z")
> [@mjmartin](#): > > I highly doubt it. There is no real reason to think that our technology, writing, or history will survive in a coherent form for 5,000 years, especially given the uncertainties of how society will change due to climate change. And 5000 years isn’t particularly long in geologic time. I can imagine the fall and rise and fall and rise of civilization over the next 500,000 years. For perspective, “The time of divergence between archaic _H. sapiens_ and ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans caused by a [genetic bottleneck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_bottleneck) of the latter was dated at 744,000 years ago, combined with repeated early admixture events and [Denisovans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan) diverging from Neanderthals 300 generations after their split from _H. sapiens_, as calculated by Rogers et al. (2017).” So 500,000 years isn’t that long either: it’s not within human memory but at the time recognizably human species existed, though agriculture would only be invented around 10,000 BCE. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/62 "2025-07-25T14:35:09Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Regarding all that stuff stored on digital media – there was an interesting article decades and decades ago in the American Heritage magazine of Science and Technology bemoaning the fact that lots of data the US goverment had saved on mag netic tapes was unreadable, because nobody knew exactly how and in what format it had been encoded. That certainly was a big issue, decades and decades ago. But it was about a couple of decades ago that people realized it was an issue, and from then on, it ceased to be an issue, because as soon as anyone got a new storage technology (which was always orders of magnitude larger than the previous technology), they copied everything over onto the new tech. If people ever stop copying everything over, then it’ll definitely become an issue. And that might happen. But it won’t happen the same way it did in the past, with everyone just assuming they’d keep on using the old tape-readers until the last tape-reader broke down and got scrapped. The only scenario where you could really trust long-term data preservation and maintenance would be if you had multiple, independent human populations, close enough to continue to exchange information, but still far-separated enough that the collapse of one wouldn’t lead to the collapse of others. There, you might see some of them preserving the information even as others collapsed, and then transferring it back to them once they’d rebuilt enough to accept it. There’d still be gaps, but they’d be like the gaps in fibers in a rope. We might get that with space colonization, but it’s hard to imagine populations on a single planet being isolated enough for that any more. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/63 "2025-07-25T14:53:21Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > And even if the Samsung Galaxy S20 looks like a black brick from the outside, it still has buttons and things that distinguish it from a brick, and once a future archaeologist dissects it, it will reveal that it has semiconductors, a Li-On battery, etc. And there’s also “Archeology of scale” here. As famous as Roman Dodecahedrons are, when you look into them, there’s actually very few examples of them available. But smartphones? We’re building those in the _billions_. Even with recycling, it’s reasonable to suppose that millions will survive tucked away in drawers and cabinets. So future archeologists won’t have to treat every single one as a delicate and unique treasure, as we do with artefacts today. They’ll be much more open to just tearing them apart to see what makes them tick. ---
**Author:** ![mjmartin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3d9bf3/32.png) [@mjmartin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mjmartin)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/64 "2025-07-25T14:55:01Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > And 5000 years isn’t particularly long in geologic time. Sure. But geologic time wasn’t the scope asked about in the OP. > [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > So 500,000 years isn’t that long either: it’s not within human memory but at the time recognizably human species existed, though agriculture would only be invented around 10,000 BCE. Sure. But the question isn’t whether people 5,000 years from now will be able to find evidence of our existence. The question is whether they will understand our way of live, technology, etc. Certainly we don’t need to go into the hundreds of thousands of years for our way of life to be forgotten. I don’t think we would need an eon for that to happen, and any number of major world wide events would due. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/65 "2025-07-25T14:59:16Z")
> [@robby](#): > > On that note, one of the plot points in the post-apocalyptic Apple TV series [_Silo_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series)) is that a Pez dispenser is an ancient relic of unknown purpose. Of course, in Silo, that’s the result of a deliberate effort to erase their history. And even then, they didn’t completely succeed. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/66 "2025-07-25T15:01:34Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Regarding “It’s a religious object” – this really is to often the resort of people who can’t figure things out. I It’s also the result of people in the past - even the near past - being overwhelmingly _more religious_ than the post-Enlightenment West. We sometimes gloss over this, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/67 "2025-07-25T15:31:23Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > When our information databases are no longer readable and the books have turned to dust there will be many misunderstandings. What if future people regress and are not even as advanced as we are now ? > > Like what on earth is this for? > > [speed spinner fidget toy | Five Below](https://www.fivebelow.com/products/speed-spinner-fidget-toy?variant=9076342?features:enable=hide_user_registration&https://www.fivebelow.com/?utm_source=shp&utm_medium=zadv_search&utm_campaign=FVBW_GOOGLE_PLS_PMAX-SHOP-TRAF-SEAS_FY24_FEB2024_JAN2025&utm_content=%7b%7bad.id%7d%7d&ogmap=SEM%7cSHP%7cGOOG%7c%7c%7cMULTI%7c%7cSITEWIDE%7c%7cFVBW_GOOGLE_PLS_PMAX-SHOP-SEAS_FY24_FEB2024_JAN2025&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20575604146&gbraid=0AAAAADnAGDlLPkjr7kmknuO5hHJY4wKux&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkILEBhDeARIsAL--pjwfvlAvn0E2i-o_HKnv6ze6IZrNjUlob8XYKZ3dVhkWjSlGjKdmFQAaAtKJEALw_wcB) > [@Andy\_L](#): > > It’s a religious object Yes, it’s obviously a prayer wheel to the threesome deity. You speak your supplication while chewing chicle, then divide it and place into the receptacles. It spiritually repeats your words with every rotation until a piece is cast out. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/68 "2025-07-25T21:01:28Z")
I believe that unless there is a total global collapse of civilization - something that has never happened before - then the internet will continue to exist, and as we know, nothing on the internet is ever truly gone. 10,000 years from now, this very thread will still exist somewhere, embedded in the DNA of synthetic sea algae, or stored on the ring of singularities orbiting the planet, or on whatever the hell they’ll be using for data storage by then. The trick will be finding it. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/69 "2025-07-25T21:49:52Z")
Perhaps the technology will exist in 5000 years for Historians to journey 5000 light years from Earth and just watch our TV shows. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/70 "2025-07-25T22:40:15Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > it ceased to be an issue, because as soon as anyone got a new storage technology (which was always orders of magnitude larger than the previous technology), they copied everything over onto the new tech. That will come as news to the people working in the field. There’s still a large number of people who don’t see the value in old information. The stuff we’re working with currently, or that we have to consult regularly, gets saved, but old stuff? Why spend time and money copying data you don’t use? Archivists and those in related professions, of course, understand the value of old information, but they’re not always consulted. Consider, for example, social media posts: major events such as the Arab Spring, BLM protests, and similar were organized and reported largely on social media, but a lot of the relevant posts have been deleted, permanently. Then, too, there’s the MySpace music archive: something on the order of 50 million songs uploaded to that service before 2016 were permanently lost in a botched migration. (~450,000 have been recovered since, from somebody who’d done mass downloads back in the day.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/71 "2025-07-25T23:12:45Z")
Data still gets lost because of things like botched backups, and it still gets lost because of people deliberately deleting it. But it doesn’t get lost any more from people just leaving it in the back of a closet until the reader gets scrapped. Like, when I get a new hard drive, the first thing I do is make a folder on it, and copy the entire contents of my old hard drive onto it. This is trivial to do, because the new drive is so much larger than the old, and it means that if I ever decide I need something from the old one, I can get it. I could go through and delete things I know I won’t need any more, but I don’t, because finding the things I don’t need would be more work than it’s worth. And I suspect that the same is true of, well, pretty much everyone who stores data. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2025, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/72 "2025-07-25T23:26:52Z")
> [@dwyr](#): > > The Weans I was going to bring that up – the people of We, or US, with their capital city of Pound-Laundry, and their enemies the More We, or USSR. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/73 "2025-07-27T04:36:11Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I believe that unless there is a total global collapse of civilization - something that has never happened before - then the internet will continue to exist… I wish I were as sanguine as you. First off, the fact that there has never been a total global collapse of civilization doesn’t mean much when you consider the fact that it’s only been a few decades that we’ve had the capability to do so. Just considering the threat of nuclear war, war planners in the 1950s reportedly estimated it would take “only” a few hundred nuclear weapons to assure complete destruction of the other side, which evolved into the strategy of so-called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). And then both sides proceeded to build _tens of thousands_ of nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the world many times over. At least the situation was more-or-less stable with just two sides. But now throw into the mix China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, possibly Iran, etc. and the situation is anything but stable. Indeed, we seem hell-bent on coming up with new and innovative ways to threaten not just our civilization but our very survival as a species, whether through nuclear Armageddon, climate change, artificial super-intelligence, a global pandemic, etc. Sorry to be a downer, but I’m not very hopeful these days when I see the world leaders who are currently in charge of the various superpowers. And for the OP to suggest that future archaeologists and historians can’t possibly know the details of current events presupposes that there won’t ever be anything that threatens our civilization, which I unfortunately don’t think is a great assumption. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/74 "2025-07-27T05:22:13Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Like, when I get a new hard drive, the first thing I do is make a folder on it, and copy the entire contents of my old hard drive onto it. That may work for individuals, but it doesn’t work in the institutional space. We’re not replacing one new hard drive every few years; we’re adding dozens or hundreds of new hard drives on a regular basis, and they’re almost never direct drop-in replacements. When you’re shuffling terabytes or petabytes of data around in a data center environment, somebody has to affirmatively find what is to be moved to which new fileserver or storage array, meaning stuff gets left behind as unneeded, unnecessary, or nobody still on staff knows why it might have been important or remembers to get it moved. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/75 "2025-07-27T11:05:25Z")
Consider carabiners. It’s entirely possible that future anthropologists would figure out from boxes or written texts how they were used in mountain climbing. But imagine them puzzling over a modern preserved city and the number of people who have one randomly clipped to their keys, or a belt loop or purse strap. Even i couldn’t tell you why they do that. Or why there is a box of them near the register at every convenience store. We just seem to like to have one at hand. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/76 "2025-07-27T12:48:29Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > But imagine them puzzling over a modern preserved city and the number of people who have one randomly clipped to their keys, or a belt loop or purse strap. So the city was preserved, but not even one of the millions of glossy brochures and pamphlets for promo item companies etc? And even you acknowledge many of them would be found with keys still clipped. So what’s left to puzzle out? ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/77 "2025-07-27T13:30:15Z")
> [@robby](#): > > …And for the OP to suggest that future archaeologists and historians can’t possibly know the details of current events presupposes that there won’t ever be anything that threatens our civilization, which I unfortunately don’t think is a great assumption. Sorry, that should be “…can’t possibly _not_ know…” ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/78 "2025-07-27T13:37:40Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Consider carabiners. It’s entirely possible that future anthropologists would figure out from boxes or written texts how they were used in mountain climbing. But imagine them puzzling over a modern preserved city and the number of people who have one randomly clipped to their keys, or a belt loop or purse strap. > > Even i couldn’t tell you why they do that. Or why there is a box of them near the register at every convenience store. > > We just seem to like to have one at hand. Complicated by the fact that the vast majority of carabiners sold are completely unsuitable for mountain climbing, being made of lightweight aluminum. These carabiners are suitable for clipping lightweight objects only, not mountain climbing. Hence the warning included with all of those checkout-stand carabiners that say “NOT FOR CLIMBING.” ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/79 "2025-07-27T14:01:03Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > I think you are confusing History with tradition. Most people only care about the former when it reinforces the latter. The idea that a civilization (or extraterrestrial visitors to Earth) thousands of years in the future will be interested in how we lived is a pretty wishful and, frankly, arrogant assumption. And yet we still enjoy stories about the Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt, Victorian England or pre-internet 1980s United States. I think people always are interested in stories about how people lived in other times and places. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2025, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235/80 "2025-07-27T14:13:04Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I think people always are interested in stories about how people lived in other times and places. Outside the context of popular entertainment, interest in History and prehistory is mostly in the service of religion and nationalism. If we are asking ourselves if people 5000 years from now will be interested in the same things we are, it’s helpful to consider what was of interest to people 5000 years ago. So much of what we think is important to civilization is really what we think is important to _our_ civilization. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-now-at-the-point-where-future-archeologists-historians-cant-possibly-misunderstand-or-not-know-what-our-current-day-items-objects-and-events-are/1021235.md?page=5)